When you hear a new high-end smartphone announced what’s the first company you think of when wondering which processor is inside said new phone? If you’re a tech enthusiast more than likely it’s going to be Qualcomm, and there’s a very good reason for that. While Qualcomm has been around for what seems like forever in the mobile world, their name became more popular since the beginning of Android because they’ve powered more Android phones than any other vendor. Simply put Qualcomm has released more top-end high-quality chipsets than nearly anyone else in the mobile world and that has paid off as they are now the quintessential standard in all high-end devices. This sort of strategy has a trade-off though, and one that doesn’t gel well when countries like China and India are seeing the biggest growth, simply because consumers in those countries prefer mid to entry-level phones over the high-price high-performance ones that Qualcomm usually specializes in.
This has resulted in the worst growth quarter Qualcomm has seen since the summer of 2010, and one that actually missed the revenue predictions by analysts, causing stocks to slide. Qualcomm reported $6.37 billion revenue, which is actually up 4 percent from this time last year, however it fell short of analysts expectations of $6.479 billion. This is also the smallest growth Qualcomm has seen in any quarter since that summer 2010 time period where they only saw a 2 percent increase in revenue. Recently Qualcomm has seen upwards of 20 percent growth rates between quarters, which is why the number was so high on investor’s ends. There is hope for Qualcomm though, as they are generally the leading chipset maker when it comes to LTE-enabled chipsets, and China Mobile is launching its 4G LTE network later this year. The likelihood of new mobiles feature Qualcomm chipsets in China because of this is very high, and will likely spur on significant growth for the company.